Esquina de los escritores
Qué Pasa, OSU Editor 23′-24′
Queridxs lectores,
The Qué Pasa team began this year with some big changes—a new editor and two new staff members. While I contemplated the excitement and trepidation of these shifts, I also reflected on what our Latinx community within the magazine, OSU, and beyond has done and continues to achieve. We are not just imagining and thinking about our future and potential worlds but actively creating, engaging, and affecting changes and improvements in our world. With new Latinx faculty hires, STEM award-winners, and VPOTUS house visits in our ranks, our OSU Latinx community continues to demonstrate the purposeful, empowering, and positive impacts we make beyond our campus.
Through these reflections and submissions received, our team arrived at our theme: Latinxs Co-Creating Our Future. And, really, we found that “Co-Creating” was the keyword here since our contributors and interviewees consistently brought up this aspect of collaborative work with, for, and by the community. We also enthusiastically embraced the futuristic and creative aspects of the theme as we collaboratively created the cover and middle spread—which we hope you’ll enjoy reading as much as we did creating it! In this issue, you’ll find that community comes through in the interviews with new faculty members, Drs. Mintzi Martinez-Rivera (English) and fabian romero (Comparative Studies). Scholarly achievements and recognitions surface in the interviews with Reginal Loayza for her 2023 Udall Scholarship Award and graduate student Elvira Cruz-Cruz for her NASA’s 2023 Future Investigators NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) grant, as well as the representation of diversity in STEM with OSU alumnus Dr. José Méndez-Andino. We also share the super cool visit Caleb Gonzalez and I did to the VP’s house this summer and what that meant to us.
Thinking about politics and its impact on Latinx and Latin American communities, this issue also shares a “Reflection on Higher Education” after the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, along with processes of creating our future in Fernando Caro-Lopez’s reporting about the Chilean Constitutional Writing Process. Finally, we also think about our community’s creative prowess by featuring poems by Dr. Leonardo Tonus, highlighting the Spanish writing work of Jaylene Canales, showcasing photography by Aleshly Castro, and the persuasive book talk from our very own Astrid Coste.
You’ll see that this issue blends in both hope and humor, solemnity and levity, and questioning and affirmation. All of these qualities point to the continuous endeavors of our evolving community and our efforts at deliberately creating our futures. Thus, we are incredibly proud and eager to share this issue. Enjoy reading!
Humildemente, con cariño y respeto,
Irma J. Zamora Fuerte